CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

About the Music

Tagaret sat in the audience, watching his brother, holding his breath. At first, it seemed like he’d done it, that the price of telling Benél had actually been worth it. Nekantor came to the podium when he was introduced, but he looked more than half-manic, and when he opened his mouth, he made no sense, talking about Father, and Sorn, and votes and patterns . . . Then he crumpled to the floor, half-hidden by the podium.

That should have been it. That should have been it!

Except then, from the seat to his right, Pyaras murmured, “Poor Nekantor.”

Tagaret gaped at him. Poor Nekantor? It was the single last thing he would have expected to hear out of his cousin’s mouth.

Pyaras’ dark brows drew together. “Wait, hadn’t you heard, either? I’m so sorry!”

“No,” Tagaret said. This couldn’t be happening. “No . . .”

Reyn gently squeezed his left arm. “Oh, Tagaret, what a way to learn your father has joined the stars.”

“Elinda keep him,” Gowan added.

“No,” Tagaret repeated. But suddenly it was all so clear: everything he’d done had been for nothing. Nekantor had fallen apart in front of the entire Pelismara Society—and nobody had noticed. When he looked at the stage again, Arissen Karyas had got him up into a chair, and Nek was crying. All the murmurs in the crowd had turned to pity. Oh, poor Nekantor, what a loss to such a keen young candidate, what terrible news to endure when he was already under such pressure.

Tagaret clenched his fists. Gnash him, the bastard toad!

Before they even began voting, he knew. Knew, with a certainty that made him sick.

“Nekantor of the First Family, can you come and stand by me?”

Tagaret surged to his feet in horror. All around him, others were standing, too, clapping and cheering. There were shouts of dismay, of course, but the First Family had always been well-regarded, and that obviously hadn’t changed.

Nothing had changed.

“Holy Mai,” he breathed. “Merciful Heile, help me.”

“Are you all right?” asked Reyn.

“Tagaret,” said Gowan reassuringly, “I know it’s not what you wanted, but politics is like that.”

Tagaret wheeled on him. “Fine,” he snapped. “Clap for him. Gowan, Reyn, Pyaras, all of you clap—protect yourselves, gnash it! Never let him suspect that you doubted him, much less that you hated him, not even for a second.”

“Tagaret—hey . . .” Reyn reached a hand to his shoulder.

Tagaret jerked away. He pushed past Pyaras and shoved out of the row, up the aisle and through the arch, took one look at the celebratory decorations in the ballroom and bolted for the nearest outside door. A few steps into the dark gravel paths of the shrub gardens, he stopped and tried to breathe.

“Sir,” Imbati Kuarmei said, startling him. Of course she was at her station—he’d simply forgotten she was there. “What may I do for you?”

“Nothing, Kuarmei,” Tagaret said. Nothing could be done to change this. He glanced back at the ballroom windows. The Pelismara Society had begun to fill the space in their colored suits and gowns, rejoicing at the end of the Selection, celebrating the beginning of a new era under Eminence Herin and Heir Nekantor. Except nothing about it was new at all. Tagaret’s feet moved on their own, faster and faster out of the gardens, then out the northern grounds gate and into the city.

He wanted Della so badly. She’d sacrificed so much, accepting censure and abuse in return for escape from her nightmare betrothal. How could he tell her that Nekantor had won because of the Sixth Family’s vote? That the worst had come because of what they did? Yet he must, somehow . . .

He found his way to the right circumference easily enough, then hesitated; his memory of the path to find her was too vague. Which radius had the Arissen driver turned into? Ah, this was it—he accelerated into a run as he turned the corner, and nearly collided with a person who came seemingly out of nowhere. A startled face glanced up at him: pale, with a shiny burn scar on the left cheekbone.

“Vant?” Tagaret said.

The person bolted away across the street and vanished—into the Akrabitti way.

Tagaret blinked after him. That had been Vant, hadn’t it? He must have come here after finishing at Della’s house not long ago . . . but what in Varin’s name was he doing going down an undercaste alleyway?

Name of Bes, what if this was his fault? What if he’d gone and scared the boy again, and sent him into a panic? If Vant got lost—or hurt . . .

Tagaret crossed the street and ran after him. “Vant! Wait!”

Vant didn’t seem to hear. Tagaret ran fast at first, following the boy’s retreating back, but soon had to slow to a walk to avoid stinking puddles and tangles of trash. Gods, just look at this place. This was Pelismara—it was the truth lying behind every noble house, even the Residence, though no one there would open their eyes to see it. This darkness was the fear in every heart, whispering of illness and death. His own father had smelled like this, festering with the rot of coercion and betrayal. And the tangled pipes on the walls were as twisted as his brother’s mind. He couldn’t let Vant fall victim to it.

Kuarmei simply followed him as he pushed on.

The alleyway stopped abruptly. A glimmer of silver light grew ahead, and Tagaret found himself dumped into a tiny open space, a sort of courtyard squeezed between the arms of a hulking concrete building that loomed three stories high. A single street lamp stood at the center of the space, but it was eyeless and dark. The only light came from three floating wysps, and from a shinca hidden somewhere nearby, whose light issued from two arched tunnels under the curved body of the building. Silver light cast misshapen shadows outwards through the iron stairs and railings. There was a strange mechanical hissing sound in the air, and a deep rumbling in the ground under his feet.

There were also people.

Three figures in dark hoods emerged from a shadowed tunnel beneath the building’s arm, moving warily like feral animals.

“Sir,” Kuarmei whispered.

Mercy—Vant wasn’t the only one in trouble.

Tagaret turned, but two more Akrabitti blocked his way back into the alley: one awkward and gangly, the other a giant larger than any Arissen he’d ever seen.

Fear closed around his throat. How many people could Kuarmei fight at once?

Then a child’s voice cried from somewhere above, in crazed excitement. “Look, all ye look! The gang’s nabbed a Grobal!”

The cry set off a rockfall. Footsteps thumped—strange, accented voices shouted—doors burst wide all along the building. Bright yellow rectangles silhouetted hooded people of all sizes who crowded to the railings and peered down.

They were going to die.

“Kuarmei, I’m so sorry,” Tagaret whispered. The thought of leaving Vant made him sick, but what choice did they have? “How can we get out?”

“Stay by me, sir,” Kuarmei replied with admirable calm. “We’ll have to attempt the alleyway.”

The giant undercaste man gave a gravelly laugh. “Took a wrong path, all you did,” he growled. “Now all we will put that to good use.”

“There’s nothing all we won’t put to good use,” a thin voice agreed behind them.

How would an Akrabitti put a musician’s apprentice to use? Horrifying thought . . .

“Let’s go,” said Kuarmei. Hands raised, she advanced toward the pair blocking the alleyway. Tagaret followed close behind, but suddenly another hooded Akrabitti darted from the shadows and placed himself directly in their path.

With his back to them.

The new Akrabitti shouted at the giant man. “Lights and fires, Griss! Have ye wysp-madness now? These folk carry no orsheth!”

Kuarmei stopped, though her hands were still ready for the attack. Tagaret held his breath.

“Let us see, then,” the giant man growled. “Look and see, now. Highers are rich.”

“Ye’re a fool, Griss. Melumalai carry orsheth, yes, and Kartunnen, too, but these? Ye’d search all them and find plastic squares, no use to ye or anyone here, only to one by name of Grobal! Or would ye take his coat maybe? And fence it how? One step in the gray market with a prize like that, and Arissen would snap yer family whole. Ye stay all them here, and ye’ll soon see how many police swarm after.” He stamped his foot. “Not a bargain we’re keen for, so leave all them be, unless ye fancy to see the Pit too soon.”

His words doused the excitement among the watchers. People began to slip back behind their doors; the crowds at the railings thinned and soon were gone. Even the folk on the ground level gradually vanished into the dirty shadows, until the only ones left in the tiny courtyard were giant Griss and their strange defender, still staring each other down.

“Shinca-fire,” Griss growled at last. He lunged away to one side and vanished around the stub end of the building at a lumbering run.

The boy who had defended them remained unmoving, breathing hard.

“Akrabitti?” Tagaret said, uncertainly. “Thank you. Is there some way I can repay you for saving us? You’re right that I have no money . . .” Too right, when he thought about it. How would an Akrabitti know about expense markers, anyway? “Maybe, if you’d give me your name . . .”

The Akrabitti ran.

“Kuarmei, catch him.”

Kuarmei flashed him a look, but darted away after the boy into one of the bright tunnels underneath the building. Tagaret ran after, emerging on the back side just as Kuarmei caught their fugitive. Here, barely a skimmer’s length separated the back of the concrete building from a vast face of cracked and dripping rock, embedded with an enormous circle of iron grillwork. Incongruously, a shinca pierced upward through the space, filling it with warmth and light.

Kuarmei brought the Akrabitti boy up close to the shinca. He was a pitiful creature in the light. His shoes were falling apart; he wore ill-fitting clothes in a stained, dirty gray, and of course there was the dark gray hood. The boy covered his face with both hands, quivering with such terror that his knees were like to give way.

Tagaret bit his lip. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked Kuarmei to catch him—this was an awfully nasty way to thank someone.

“I’m really sorry,” he said. “I know you put yourself at risk to help us. All I really want to do is thank you properly.”

“Mercy,” the boy mumbled. “Have mercy, sir.”

“Please, you don’t need to hide. Just give me your name.”

There was something strange about the boy’s hands. Of course they were filthy, shoved up beneath the edge of his dark hood, but their shape was strangely refined. Such long and graceful fingers—

Tagaret grabbed the boy’s wrist and pulled his hand away from his face.

There was a shiny burn scar on his left cheekbone.

Sweet Heile have mercy. “Y—you?” Tagaret stammered, disbelieving. “Vant?”

The boy fell limp in Kuarmei’s grasp. “Grobal Tagaret, sir, don’t hurt me,” he begged. “Don’t have me killed.”

It was. The boy he’d thought he’d come in here to rescue—his nose, his scar, even his voice, suddenly changed from the rough accent of his hooded fellows back to the careful diction he’d used in the concert hall, and at Della’s house.

“I’d never get you killed,” Tagaret said. “You know me—I think. How can you be here?”

“I live here,” Vant said miserably.

“But how can you?”

Vant gulped. “Kartunnen Ryanin, he—he dresses me in fancy clothes, and paints my face. Calls me apprentice. Takes me places. Gives me orsheth. And p-paper, to write on.”

His first thought was that Ryanin was terribly generous. But that was more than generous—it was dangerous. Not simply to give charity to an Akrabitti from the street, but to crossmark him and bring him to the Eminence’s Residence? “Why in Varin’s name would he do that?”

Vant’s face filled with despair. “For my music.”

Tagaret lost his breath completely. He staggered backward, realizing it was all around him. The black walls of rock. The sounds of dripping, the high-pitched hiss of ventilators issuing from the grid on the cavern wall, and the rumble of the subterranean Endro beneath his feet. The dark ways crowded with desperate people, searching vainly for escape.

“You wrote it,” he breathed. “This is the Catacomb.”

Vant nodded.

“Kuarmei,” Tagaret said. “Let him go.”

“Sir.”

Released, Vant took an unsteady step back. “Grobal Tagaret, sir . . .”

“Don’t tell—” Tagaret began, then realized that even if a hundred Akrabitti reported this incident, no one would believe them. “Kuarmei, we haven’t been here. We did not speak to this boy, and you have never met him before.”

“My heart is as deep as the heavens,” Kuarmei said. “No word uttered in confidence will escape it.”

“Vant, you know what that means, don’t you?” Tagaret asked. “If we should meet again, as I don’t doubt we will, none of the three of us will behave as if we’d met tonight.”

Vant nodded, his eyes wide. Kuarmei looked extremely skeptical.

Without saying goodbye, Tagaret turned and strode back through the tunnel, across the now-empty courtyard, and into the alleyway that had brought them here.

“Kuarmei,” he said, after a few seconds, “I apologize. I won’t ever do that again.”

“Of course not, sir.” She followed him silently for more than a minute, as if weighing what to say. “But, sir? You should know that Akrabitti are rapacious with information.”

“I didn’t know that.”

They emerged onto the radius again more quickly than he expected—astonishing, how close that other world was to his. But maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Master,” said Kuarmei. “I mean they don’t keep secrets.”

Tagaret shrugged. “This one does. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t still be alive. Give Vant a chance, Kuarmei. When we meet him again, you’ll see what I mean.”

He thought the topic finished, but as they walked inward from the grounds gate, she spoke again, quietly. “Sir? What makes you so sure we’ll see him again?”

Tagaret stopped and turned to face her. “I met him at Della’s house, Kuarmei. Della’s younger sister was playing yojosmei, and he was sitting beside her, playing also. That’s where we’ll see him again. There may be no better way to express our thanks than to protect his secret. His music needs to be heard.”

Kuarmei pressed her lips together. “Yojosmei? The Kartunnen instrument?”

“Exactly.”

Inside its bright bubble, the celebration of the Selection’s end hadn’t diminished at all. Clumps of sparkling, jewel-colored people gathered in groups, talking and laughing along the base of the tall windows, and couples had started dancing. As they entered, the sound of a Kartunnen orchestra washed over them.

Tagaret approached the nearest Household servant. “Imbati, can you please direct us to Selemei of the First Family?”

The Imbati bowed and escorted them, skirting the dancers until they reached a tall marble column not far from the orchestra. Lady Selemei was enjoying a drink with Secretary Boros, Menni of the Second Family, and Amyel of the Ninth Family. She raised her glass when she saw him.

“Tagaret! I wondered what had happened to you.” Her eyes showed a worry far greater than that suggested by her smile.

“Ah, sorry,” Tagaret said. “May we speak alone for a moment? If you would excuse us, that is, Gentlemen.”

“Certainly,” Amyel replied. “And I should say, congratulations! Tonight we bow willingly to First Family business, don’t we, Boros?”

Boros clapped Amyel on the back. “How about we find some of those cakes I was mentioning.”

“Congratulations, Tagaret,” said Menni, offering his hand. “Your brother’s determination really surprised me.”

Tagaret shook it. “I’d be happy to renew our acquaintance, Menni,” he said. “I hope I can speak with you later.”

Menni smiled. “I’ll look for you.”

At last he was alone—or close enough to it—with Lady Selemei.

“Ustin,” said the Lady. “If you’d help keep our conversation private . . .”

Tagaret nodded to Kuarmei, and the two Imbati posted themselves in bodyguard stances, causing the flow of the crowd to retreat. Lady Selemei put her back into the corner where the column emerged from the wall, planting her cane firmly to one side. “I’ve been very worried for you,” she murmured.

“I’m fine, Cousin,” Tagaret said. “In fact, I’m better than ever.”

Her smile was sad. “You sound like Erex.”

“Well, Erex might be happy to know this, too.”

Selemei’s brows lifted.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “I want to offer you a deal: I’ll become your cabinet assistant, if you promise you’ll respect my mother’s wishes and leave her out of politics for good.”

Selemei studied his face, with a smile hovering about her lips. “I can agree to that. May I ask what changed your mind?”

“I’ve always believed in your project, Cousin. I want to improve life for our ladies.”

Her gaze sharpened. “But?”

Tagaret leaned down, speaking into her ear. “But they’re not the only ones suffering. We all are—and that means we need a grander project. To improve life for everyone.”

“The Grobal Trust . . .”

“Is broken. We’ve been blind—blind to our own place in a game of power as big as all of Varin. It’s not only killing the Race; it’s killing our people, killing the very soul of our civilization. Honestly, Cousin, I don’t know how to change it. I just know I have to. But it’s like you said: I can’t change anything from the outside. If I get in, then eventually I can find somewhere to experiment—someplace where I won’t be watched.” Suddenly, he understood Reyn’s desire to leave. Safe Harbor wasn’t his place, but . . . “Selimna,” he breathed.

Lady Selemei chuckled in her throat. “Perhaps you may follow in your father’s footsteps after all.”

He nodded, though the thought chilled him to the core. Alixi of Selimna. Yes, that was precisely the kind of power required to change a game so large—and only an Heir could give it to him. Della had paid a high price to change the rules during the Selection, but this price would be higher still. “On that note, there’s someone else I need to talk to.”

Her intelligent eyes showed him she understood. “Shall I come with you?”

“Thank you, no. I’ll need to do this on my own.”

He wasn’t really on his own, though. Erex had given him the servant at his back; Mother had given him the courage of sunlight; Reyn had given him his direction; and Della whispered in his ear, we will outplay them. He hid the memory of darkness deep inside his heart, along with the determination to burn it away, and moved toward the largest, most ecstatic crowd in the room. They clearly recognized him, because they parted as he drew near, opening a way to the center.

The Eminence Herin stood there, beaming, one hand holding a glass of sparkling yezel, the other resting lightly on Nekantor’s shoulder. Far from resenting the touch, Nekantor glowed with it. His eyes moved fast, drinking in the adoring gazes around him. His hands were relaxed and still.

“Heir Nekantor!” Tagaret managed a grin.

Nek turned to him. “I’d been wondering when I’d see you, Tagaret.”

Then he was here none too soon. “Congratulations,” he said, and held out his hand. “The First Family will always be grateful to you for what you’ve done. I certainly couldn’t have done it myself.” Every word of it was true.

Nek raised his eyebrows and considered Tagaret’s offered hand. “You’re in a good mood.”

“The best,” Tagaret said. “I’ve got news—not near as good as yours, but I’ve just got a new job. I’m going to be Lady Selemei’s cabinet assistant!” He held his breath and waited for Nek’s reaction.

Nekantor burst into a delighted laugh, seized his hand, and shook it, clapping him on the shoulder and whispering in his ear. “Gods, Tagaret, you mean you’re in with her? This is perfect—you can stop by the Heir’s suite any time and report to me.”

Nek wanted to use him as a spy. He ignored the familiar flare of outrage. Only if Nek accepted him as a second could he hope to attain his goal. “Not often enough to make her suspicious, of course,” he murmured back. “I will have to act the part seriously, you know.”

“Most definitely. Father would be proud. Of course, you know what this means.”

“I don’t,” Tagaret confessed. “But I’m sure you do.”

His brother’s voice quivered with excitement. “It means we’ll have our chance. We’ll take our time with this game. I’ll take Father’s allies. You take his enemies. If we work together, we can remake Varin.”

“You’re right, Nek,” Tagaret said. His heart pounded, and he closed his eyes. “Together, we’re going to change everything.”